The Lost get Found
by Kewalea
Summary: "There's only so many things one can regret in a single lifetime. I mean, some people think they can just regret everything, but I don't think so. There are some things you have to be proud of, some thing that you can honestly say you were happy to do and don't wish went any other way. We can't just let everything be bad. To do so would just kill us."
1. Chapter 1

There's only so many things one can regret in a single lifetime. I mean, some people think they can just regret everything, but I don't think so. There are some things you have to be proud of, some thing that you can honestly say you were happy to do and don't wish went any other way. We can't just let everything be bad. To do so would just kill us. If we regret everything, we might as well be dead. I don't regret my decisions, not one, because every single one of them led me to my pack and my pack led me to Cheza. And that- that is not a feat worth regretting.

The light against my eyes woke me up, but it was the chill that kept me awake. I wished everything could just be a dream.

I stood up and shook myself, loosing dew drops and bits of red fur. I took a few wary steps forward, but quickly stumbled back into the alley as two humans passed, laughing with one another, not paying me any attention. When they were no longer within earshot, I stepped out again and started sniffing for food. There were some pigeons nearby, but they were hard to catch and when you missed they pecked you hard and flew away.

I sniffed the scent again, the one like wildflowers. I had smelled it the moment I got into this city, to the place of humans. I also smelled the scent of someone I knew long ago, but I don't like to think about him. He'd been gone for a long time and I didn't expect him to come back any time soon. Or ever, for that matter.

Wandering had been hard, but I endured it as best I could- as best as any wolf could. Come to think of it, the only bad parts were the ones where I had no food, no shelter and no people. I don't know what I'd do without people. They're nice, most of them. Some are mean, like the only man and his cranky dog. Why are they both so mean? Why don't they like me like everyone else does?

The city was waking up. Slowly, like ants from their respective hill, people leaked out into the street. Some were peddling their wares, some were leaning against walls, being idle. I dislike being idle sometimes, but sometimes it is not a bad thing. When you are idle and there are things to be done, then that is a bad thing. But if you are idle in an un-idyllic way- say, you are contemplating something very important to you- then that is alright. Perhaps the humans are contemplating. That would be alright.

My human form isn't as different from my wolf form as a human or a wolf might think. My hair is still red, just a little longer than my fur, reaching to my shoulder instead of just my ears. My eyes have some green in them when I'm human, but that's not much different from their normal gold tones. And my height! I'm likely just as tall as a human as the length of my wolf body. So see, it's not that difficult to see. Of course, I wear clothes as a human and that's somewhat odd. I have a sweater dress that's gray and a hat that is beige and shoes that are black. Humans are lucky, in this way. They don't have fur- except for the patch on their head- so they can be any fur they want and any color. My human skin is very pale.

I wander about as a human, wondering if I should buy anything. Of course, I can't, I have no money, but it might be nice to give someone hope, even for just a moment. But this would be seen as a prank and I have no bad intentions. I decide against it. I keep walking, keep smelling the wildflowers and ignoring them, keep wondering where my next meal will come from. Maybe I can beg the butcher. Maybe he will send me away.

I smell the person I used to know again and shake my head violently, as if his smell is repulsive. It is sweetly repulsive, like the smell of sugar when you've had too much. The humans look at me strangely and I walk off quickly, turn a side road, wait there for the smell to pass. It passes.

I keep going down the side road. There is a group of people there laughing and smiling, but I don't think they have good intentions. I try to walk by them quickly. One of them grabs my shoulder and pulls back in fear. He has felt me as I am, a wolf. I look at him curiously for a moment, then continue on. They will not bother me again, I hope. They talk amongst each other as I leave.

"It was freaky, man. Her shoulder felt like it was fur."

"Tell Tsume, he'll know what's up with it."

I left the side passage. There was nothing for me there.

Then there was the smell again and it intoxicated me, it wanted me to find it. I ran away, as fast as I could, I heard my paws hit the ground furiously, I didn't care if anyone saw me as a wolf. I heard dogs barking as I passed, but they faded as quick as they would come. Some part of me knew I was going too fast. The rest didn't care. That was, until I slipped on something and rolled too many times to count and hit a wall. Then, all every part of me cared about was the pain in my back. I whimpered pathetically. At least the smell was gone.

Another smell entered my awareness. This one was pleasant and much closer to me then the other two smells.

"Hey there," it said, "You've got to be more careful." I looked up. He was shaped like a boy with messy brown hair and goofy, endearing smile. "You know, girl wolves are kind of a rarity now. Would you like to go with me for a while? I smell something interesting's going to happen now." I thought it over for a moment, then nodded. I tried getting up, but my back wouldn't let me.

The boy smiled. He picked me up and carried me. I let my head rest on him. "My name's Hige," he said. "You got a name?"

"Tabby," I said simply and let my mind rest. I thought he was right. The wildflowers smelled interesting. They had to mean something important.

**A/N: Chapter's kind of slow, but it does properly reflect Tabby and it does establish time and place well. Plus, she meets Hige! That's exciting! Family reunions to occur soon and all sorts of chaos to ensue soon!**


	2. Chapter 2

Hige is a very hungry person, I think. Maybe he's missing something important.

We were together for three days and I had more food in those three days than I collected in a week. It was wonderful. Hige didn't care much for hunting like I did. We didn't hunt pigeons or rats. Instead, we gathered human foods. Human foods are kind of horrible, but they are easier to get than hunted foods. Hot dogs were the easiest to get and the most tasty, which is not to say that they wee tasty at all, just more so than all the other foods they had.

One time, we managed to get a steak. I like telling this story. It starts out like this:

On the second evening, I head Hige's stomach growling. "How are you still hungry?" I asked him and he said, "I don't know." So we got up, both of us looking like humans, and started walking around to look for something to eat. We pass all kinds of human shops and some of them even have lights inside. There's one selling spicy cooked foods and one selling sweet cooked foods and one selling humans for sex. We weren't really interested in any of them. We were, however, interested by the sweet raw meat smells from the butcher's shop.

"How can we get some?" I asked Hige, looking into his face for a plan. He had one. It was great.

I ran into the butcher's shop, acting like I had been attacked. There was some blood on my clothes. The butcher's wife came to my side first, followed, reluctantly, by the butchers. She asked me who had done it and I said that I didn't know. I didn't let her or the butcher touch the bloody, torn part of my dress, claiming that the wound hurt too much. The wife wanted to call the police but the butcher didn't want any trouble. He said he could stitch me up just as good as any doctor. He went into the back of the store and after a moment the wife follows him, too, and I can hear him arguing. While they are gone, Hige comes in and, as wolves, we take as many steaks as we can into our mouths. Then, the butcher comes back in.

He yells, quite loudly, and his wife screams, too. He grabs a knife and tries to get us, but we are too fast for him, we are wolves, fast and mighty. We escape by the skin of our teeth and run down the street as fast as we can. I hear the butcher following us and try to run fast, but I am small and weaker than Hige. Hige turns a corner, but I don't turn fast enough so I miss it. We became separated. I was still being chased. I tried to run faster than my legs would let me.

I let loose a few steaks to trip the butcher. He doesn't trip. But, I can hear that he's getting tired. He is a large man and likely doesn't run this much. I am tired, too, though. I know that even if he is slowing down, I am as well and that if I slow down too much, he will kill me and sell me among his wares, I will become reduced to "dog- liver, sausage, steak" right next to "cow- steak, ground" and "venison- ground, sausage, steak." I do not wish to be dead right then. I turn a sharp, dark corner.

When I turn this corner, I am upon the boys I saw the other day. I am between a rock and a hard place. I decide to hit the hard place. I keep running and run through group of boys. They wrap their arms around me, pull at the steak, even pull my tail, there was a pain in my side like a kick, but damn, I kept running and they didn't follow me. When I escape the alley, I hear them argue with the butcher. The rock hit the hard place and they've made a spark and now they've become a fire burning very naughty words as kindling. I've escaped him, so I slow to a walk. The steaks are still in my mouth and I felt incredibly light headed, as a person barely escaping death should.

It only takes ten minutes of wandering before Hige finds me. We met in an alley. When I see him, I drop my steaks carefully and wag my tail. I tried to sit down, but the pain in my side wouldn't let me. Everything got a bit blurry. Hige is at my side before I am aware of it and helps me lie down. This is the first time I notice the blood leaking out of my side. This is a red darker than my fur.

Hige looks very guilty. I do not think the ground will kill me. I want to lick the wound clean, but I can't. Hige starts to do so for me.

"Alright, Tabby," he says after a while, "Let's just stick to hot dogs from now on." I agreed.

I was perfectly fine in two days time. Even better than fine. The steaks we got were infinitely more delicious than hot dogs. On the evening of the fourth day together, we sat on a rooftop and watched the sun set.

"You know, there are other wolves in town, too. I can smell 'em," Hige said.

I nodded. I still smelled the wildflowers and the smell of the one I knew long ago, but they mingled with the smells of new wolves, too, and together they brewed a most interesting scent.


	3. Chapter 3

I think Hige might like me. He'd be really hard to keep as a mate though. And, besides that, I'm much too young to worry about mates. He still calls me "Pup." But he also calls me "Babe" and that's gets very confusing sometimes.

When we had been together for a week, Hige said that he smelled Wolf blood. I smelled it, too. It did not smell like the one I had known but wished to forget. His smell was still here, too.

We followed the smell without rushing. Hige said it would be pointless. It still smelled alive. Maybe an hour later, we found where the scent stopped: a police station.

"He's in there, all right," Hige said, looking up at the big building.

"Are we gonna get him out?" I asked, looking at Hige with my eyebrows furrowed.

"That's right, Chickadee," he said, scratching his head.

"But…how will we get him out of there?" I ask looking again at the building. He was on a higher floor from the smell of it. That would mean we'd have to be able to get in the building in the first place and manage to get past the humans to a higher floor.

"Don't worry about it," Hige said and gave me a crooked smile. "I've got a plan." And I wanted to believe that the plan would be good but the last time he gave me that look was when we went to get the steaks. Then again, that plan did work. For the most part. I tried to be optimistic.

Hige told me to wait outside, so I did. He was gone for the better part of an hour.

In that hour, I spent my time observing. I sat on a wooden crate, just looking around at the humans around me. They are a lot like wolves, but not really, too. It's a bit confusing. See, they don't look like wolves. Wolves are hairy. Humans are naked, mostly. Wolves have wet noses and humans have dry. Wolves have paws and humans have hands and feet. But I don't think our anatomy is all that different. Humans have toes and fingers and wolves sort of do, too. We've both got four legs, even if humans only walk on two. We had similarities. But, see, humans are cowards. Maybe they were raised that way. Maybe it's learned. But wolves, wolves are always brave. This is because wolves are always afraid. We're afraid of dying, we're afraid of starving and we're afraid of humans. It's kind of silly, really, to be afraid of something cowardly. Humans are so cowardly, though, that they built machines to make them feel brave and they hid behind their machines and killed off the brave wolves who did not have machines to fight with. Cowardly humans. Still, I do feel pity for them and I feel…happy, maybe, that they exist. Nobody wants to die. Nobody wants to starve or freeze. We sit in this dome, in what the humans call Freeze City, because it's easier to be here and I admit that I am cowardly when I should be brave. Maybe wolves are becoming like humans. Maybe we hide behind our claws like they hide behind their machines. Who knows? I know that if we want to survive together, we have to learn to coexist. But in order to do that, they need to know that we still exist in the first place.

Hige emerged from the police building with a pale wolf shaped like a pale human with black hair. He is exactly the wolf we were looking for. When I saw them, I waved and smiled.

"Where to?" I asked and jumped off the crate I was on. The stranger wolf smelled hurt, but he didn't act like it. Wolves are brave creatures.

Hige thought about it for a moment. "I think we should get hot dogs. Hot shot here hasn't eaten in a couple days," he said, motioning to the stranger wolf. I nodded and the three of us walked towards the nearest hot dog stand.

"What's your name?" I asked the new guy, "And what're you doing in a place like this?" 

"Kiba," he replied simply, "I'm looking for Paradise."


End file.
